


Hand to Hand

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Home One, Jyn is badass, Tumlbr Prompt, and Cassian appreciates it, simulator training, various rebel OCs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-02 13:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14545896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: Jyn hesitated. Cassian would kill her if she got hurt doing something stupid like this, for a thing that wasn’t a big deal. Command probably didn’t think much of their chances of getting this thing running, or they would invest more than a couple techs in it (well, one tech and one guy who apparently was just here for commentary). Kay would lecture her for hours if she damaged herself doing “non-essential recreational activities.” Bodhi would say it was her choice, but he would look sad while he did it. Baze wouldn’t say anything at all, but he would give her a look that was just as bad as Bodhi’s sad eyes.Chirrut, on the other hand, would probably have already volunteered by now.Jyn cleared her throat. “I can give it a try.”





	1. kiss with a fist

**Author's Note:**

> A challenge: "Jyn + weapons testing"

“No, no, no, I can do this, I can - hey, Sergeant, yes, you, hand me that spanner, uh, please.” 

Jyn stepped back to avoid the flapping hand that nearly smacked her in the face, scowling at the Human fem hunched over the odd-looking console in the middle of the hangar. The woman had a mechanic’s bandana holding her curly dark hair back from her work, and it was the only article of clothing on her that didn’t look slightly singed around the edges. Jyn narrowed her eyes and took a cautious sniff – electrical burns, it smelled like. And no grease stains or oil in the creases of her hands. Definitely a tech and not hangar maintenance. A bored looking Twi’lek leaned against the odd console, playing idly with some little floating drones that Jyn didn’t recognize off hand.

“She means that one,” the Twi’lek sighed, pointing to a tray of tools set haphazardly on the bench next to Jyn’s hip.

“Yeah, if you could just – look, I can’t let go of these wires or we’ll have a, um,” the tech with the burnt clothes made an impatient gesture, “explosion, and I’ll lose all my work.”

“Also blow up the hangar,” the Twi’lek drawled. “Maybe breach Home One’s hull, blow some people out into the cold unforgiving reaches of space,” he grinned at Jyn and shrugged with elaborate indifference. “Terror, destruction, general death.”

“Yes, yes, that,” the tech snarled. “Will you just hand me – thanks, Sarge, you’re a gem.”

Jyn took a healthy step back as the tech plunged back into the console, which hummed ominously as she worked. “You should secure that equipment, Ensign,” she said, because she wasn’t much of a mech herself, but she knew that Bodhi never worked on a piece of hardware unless it was not only powered off but detached from it’s power source entirely.

The Ensign merely shrugged. “Can’t, Sarge. That’s the problem.”

“It’s a Fedukowski Training Simulator 288, Sarge,” the Twi’lek informed her, as if that meant anything to Jyn. “Uh, a projection-based simulation generator?” He squinted at her blank expression, apparently not picking up on her total lack of interest along with her lack of knowledge. Impatiently, Jyn debated shoving past the Twi’lek, who was blocking the narrow space between the big console and the nearest X-Wing. “It makes touch-responsive semi-corporeal holographic enemies that you can practice combat against?”

Ah. Jyn had heard of things like that; she’d floated the idea of getting one past Saw at one point, a way to train without risk of their people hurting one another. Saw had…not been impressed with her arguments, the matter had dropped, and Jyn had put it from her mind. Apparently, the Alliance was more interested in the possibilities than the Partisans had ever been.

“They have,” Jyn frowned, hunted through her memories, “safeties, right?”

“Oh, for sure, Sarge.” The Twi’lek rubbed at his lekku absently. “If you take a headshot, the simulation shuts down. If you get more than three direct hits to the body, it shuts down. If it detects blood, shut down. And if you leave the range of the projectors, shut down.”

“And those are malfunctioning?”

“Oh no, the safeties are working just fine, Sarge. The problem is the difficulty-” Something sparked in the console and the tech reared back, cursing, and Jyn tensed. Just how serious had the Twi’lek been about that whole “general death” thing? The man himself eased slowly away from where he’d been leaning, but otherwise didn’t bolt for the hangar emergency doors, so Jyn stayed too, her curiosity getting the better of her. “The problem,” the tech continued through gritted teeth, patting at a small stream of smoke coming from her sleeve until it ceased, “is that the difficulty setting got damaged when this thing was stolen from the Imps.”

“ _Acquired_ , Misha,” the Twi’lek corrected her in mock-serious tones. “Alliance doesn’t steal, we rightfully acquire spoils of war.”

“Whatever,” Misha the tech waved her hand dismissively. “So now that damn thing is stuck on the Expert setting, and it’s got some subprogram running where it won’t let me reset it unless the program runs a full five minutes. Think some arsehole  _binnesh’ka drevil ba,”_ she paused and spit over her shoulder, then continued in a normal tone, “left it on his favorite fancy training program, and now I can’t turn it off. And turning the console off and on doesn’t help, if that’s what you were about to suggest,” she glowered at Jyn, who held her hands up peacefully.

“You can’t just… run the program for five minutes?” she ventured thoughtfully. “Then it would mark the program complete and let you change it?”

“That’s just it!” The tech threw her hands in the air. “We  _can’t_. If no one’s in range, the thing resets to the start of the program. If we stand within the parameters, the holo-soldiers try to kill us, and the second we get clonked in the head or whatever, it resets! And I can’t work on it with the power off! But I can’t realign the sensors without accessing the power core!” She gave a short, incoherent shout of pure irritation, and then slammed her fists down on the surface of the console.  Then she sighed, and dove back into the console’s open panel, muttering under her breath.

The Twi’lek folded his arms and flopped against the X-wing’s landing struts. “We asked some Pathfinders to run the gauntlet for us,” he told Jyn. “So far no one’s lasted longer than two minutes. This thing is brutal, Sarge. Three of them are in the medward now, and that big scary general of theirs came marching down to tell us off for,” he held up his hands and adopted a terrible false-bass voice that Jyn assumed was a mimicry of the Pathfinder General. “ _Damaging my valuable assets_.” He sat back and folded his arms again. “He ordered us to stop challenging his people. Like we were dangling a green flag in front of a bantha bull or something.”

“Pathfinders and challenges,” the tech grunted, her voice echoing a little inside the console. “Same thing.”

Jyn hesitated. Cassian would kill her if she got hurt doing something stupid like this, for a thing that wasn’t a big deal. Command probably didn’t think much of their chances of getting this thing running, or they would invest more than a couple techs in it (well, one tech and one guy who apparently was just here for commentary). Kay would lecture her for  _hours_ if she damaged herself doing “non-essential recreational activities.” Bodhi would say it was her choice, but he would look sad while he did it. Baze wouldn’t say anything at all, but he would give her a look that was just as bad as Bodhi’s sad eyes.

Chirrut, on the other hand, would probably have already volunteered by now.

Jyn cleared her throat. “I can give it a try.”

The tech yanked her head out of the console and stared at her. A wisp of smoke spiraled up behind her bandana, the faint smell of burning hair wafting towards Jyn. The Twi’lek laughed, and then seemed to realize that Jyn was serious. “Uh, Sarge, like I said, this thing is  _brutal_. Seven Pathfinders couldn’t get through it.”

Jyn shrugged. “What’s the range?”

The techs exchanged a look. “We’ll have to clear the space,” the Twi’lek said slowly.

“Do it, Rasif,” the tech snapped. “If she pulls it off, I can finally get at that karking liminal processor.”

“And if she doesn’t,” Rasif bounced to his feet and delicately snuffed the smoking end of Misha’s burning hair, “at least we won’t have disobeyed General Cranky-Ass. I mean, you’re not one of General Madix’s people, right?”

“No,” Jyn agreed, biting back a smile as she imagined calling Draven something like ‘General Cranky-Ass’ to his face. “Definitely not one of his.”

It took the techs about ten minutes to clear away tool benches and loose wires. Jyn used the time to stretch, warming up her muscles, checking that her boots were laced tight, her scarf tucked in neatly. A few other hangar crew and techs, plus a couple astromechs trailing behind, caught sight of the setup and wandered over to see what was happening. When Rasif the Twi’lek explained, a couple pitched in to make the space, and one pulled a bit of maintainer’s chalk from her pouch and sketched out the parameters of the console’s range on the hangar floor. More people drifted in, drawn to activity, and Jyn’s shoulders started to tense a little, but she blocked it out. Not important. All she had to do was last five minutes without leaving the simulator’s range, or taking a head shot, or more than two direct hits to the body. Or bleeding, right, it could sense blood.  

“Okay, Sarge,” Misha positioned herself behind the console and pointed at the center of the marked out space. “Ready when you are.”

“Five minutes,” Rasif reminded her. “The enemies vanish when you’ve hurt them enough that the computer thinks you’ve incapacitated or killed them. There’s no kill counter goal or benchmarks to hit to end the program. All you gotta do is survive.”

Jyn took her place, pulled her truncheon, and nodded. “Go.”

A faint whine of the console was her only warning, and then a stormtrooper was standing in front of Jyn. He glowed with a faint blue light, but otherwise, he looked surprisingly solid, surprisingly real. Semi-corporeal holos, right. The crowd around them gasped at the suddenness of the enemy’s appearance, the sim-trooper raised his rifle and pointed it at Jyn’s head, but she was already moving, dropping her center of gravity down low and bringing her truncheon up in a hard, tight arc that slammed in between the sim-trooper’s legs just as the blaster fired over her head.

The blow felt a little squishy, like the ‘trooper was covered in a thick coat of foam, but the physics were pretty damn realistic because the simulated man’s body jerked up a few inches and then dropped like a sack of pta fruit. The second he hit the floor, his body dissolved into a shower of blue lights and then vanished. Jyn had no time to appreciate the somewhat pretty effect, or to pay much heed to the pained hisses of the crowd, because two more sim-troopers appeared behind her, and she had to drop and spin, lashing out with her leg to knock their ankles out from under them. Both fell hard, but apparently not hard enough to “kill” them, because they rolled back to their feet faster than she had ever seen any real stormtrooper manage. Expert level, huh. No time to worry about it. Rifle shot, skimming past her left ear as she threw herself to the right, rifle shot whistling over her head. Duck, crab left, forward, and Jyn smashed her truncheon into one helmet as she kicked out at the kneecap of the other. Helmet-strike vanished in a shower of blue sparks, but Kneecap merely dropped into a crouch and fired up at her. The bolt passed so close to Jyn’s face that she was temporarily blinded by the light, but she was close enough already that it didn’t matter. She backhanded the second sim-trooper on the downswing from the first one’s killing blow, and his head (and then the rest of him) shattered in a satisfying shower of blue.

Shouts from the sidelines, cheering, but no time because there were two deathtroopers behind Jyn and one of them had a rifle, the other long, heavy truncheons – straightsticks, standard deathtrooper armament, probably electrified at the tip – and Jyn rolled backwards, stopping herself just shy of the chalk parameter. The rifle blasts were coming too fast for her to stand still, one shot every two seconds, standard deathtrooper load out indeed, so Jyn lunged for the dual wielder to put him between her and the shooter. It bought her a few seconds, circling the dual wielder, but now  _he_ was on her, left blow aiming for her head, right blow for her gut and Jyn blocked the head blow with her truncheon and allowed the right to connect with her ribs, tightening her core to absorb the blow.

Fuck, it  _hurt_ , and distantly she heard a buzzer indicating one body shot going off (and accompanying  _boos_  and hisses from the crowd), but Jyn was fast and she looped her arm over the truncheon, trapping it against her side. She could hear the end of it sparking just behind her back – yes, they were electrified, just like in real life, shit -  but when the deathtrooper jerked on the truncheon, Jyn held it fast and twisted her wrist deftly, bringing the left truncheon down and away from her head. In the same smooth motion, she slammed her own truncheon up and into the sim-trooper’s chin, and the fucker’s head snapped back (wow, she could even hear the crack of his fake neck breaking, this was a damn good simulator) and then he dissolved into blue but Jyn had no time to be satisfied about it because Fake Deathtrooper Two now had a clear shot on her. Jyn rolled forward and into his legs, and when the sim-trooper pointed his rifle down at her, Jyn slapped her truncheon over the top of the blaster and locked it in place with her elbow. It gave her control of the barrel point, which was a fucking blessing because yet another deathtrooper had just popped up in the same spot as the one she’d killed, so Jyn twisted and aimed the bolt that was meant for her face right at the new ‘trooper’s chest. He vanished as quickly as he’d arrived, without even a shot fired, and Jyn twisted to her feet, using her momentum to wrench the rifle from the sim-trooper’s hands and spin him around in the process. To her pleased surprise, the glowing gun actually came away in her hands, and Jyn raised it and fired point blank into the deathtrooper’s back. The man exploded into sparks, but so did the rifle in her hands. Alright, she could work with that.

Something behind her – more deathtroop- no, battle droid, BX commando, an early prototype of K2SO’s kind, except this one moved fast, faster than it should, and it charged her with it’s head lowered like a battering ram and it’s servos whining with deadly intent. It had trapped her against the corner of the chalked space, she realized; if she leaped to the side she would step out of the parameters and the program would reset. Only one thing to do. Jyn dropped her chin and charged right back, her arms up in front of her face like a shield, her teeth grit. Someone screamed in the crowd, a little shriek that drowned out in the roar of the crowd, and just before the heavy metal droid smashed into Jyn like a runaway speeder, she flung herself onto her back and slid neatly underneath it’s bulk, spun on her hip, and lashed out with both feet. The bottoms of her heavy boots connected with the back of its knee joints, and the force of her blow combined with the droid’s abrupt attempt to stop itself before it ran right over the chalk line and out of the console range made it teeter alarmingly backwards. Jyn scrambled back to avoid being crushed, then hopped to her feet and brought her fist down in a hammer blow on the sim-droid’s exposed chest, tipping it past the point of recovery. It crashed to the floor in a clatter of fake metal, and vanished.

Something rammed into Jyn’s back, sending her skidding across the floor (a faint buzzing sound over the bellowing crowd and her own pounding heart – that was the second body blow, couldn’t afford more), and Jyn rolled up just before the Chagrian could stomp his massive boot down on her head. The sim-Chagrian roared, all four of his horns marked with warrior-runes (great, a Servant of Storms, one of her least favorite berserker shock troops), and swung his great vibro-hammer at her again. Jyn darted in close, too close for a good hammer swing, and jammed the end of her truncheon into Big Blue’s solar plexus, several centimeters lower than it was for Humans. Big Blue grunted but didn’t stumble, and grabbed for her neck. Jyn dodged the grab and only just twisted out of the way of the hammer hilt as Big Blue tried to crack her skull open with it. More shrieks from the crowd, but she couldn’t interpret their warning and didn’t have time to try, because Big Blue  _dropped the hammer_ and fuck, that was  _cheating_ , Servants of Storms  _never_ dropped their hammers, simulated son of a karking b-

Big Blue’s hand closed over Jyn’s face, and it felt a little like a thick cloth pressing against her face, but the sim-Chadrian lifted her as easily as a real warrior might and flung her again. Jyn gasped as air rushed into her face again and wrenched her body to orient with the floor. She had to land on her feet or the stupid fucking sim would probably read it as a damn body blow and then –

She landed hard on the balls of her feet, the impact jarring all the way up her legs and spine, making her teeth click together painfully. She breathed through it, and used the coiled impact to launch herself back along the floor, her truncheon low and at the ready. Big Blue swung for her head, bellowing, but Jyn dropped to one knee and  _crack, crack_ , took out both his knees. She rolled to the side as the screaming warrior crashed to his shattered knees. There was no time or room for a good truncheon swing, so instead Jyn gripped the lower horns, and then rolled over the sim-Chadrian’s shoulders, letting her weight pull her sharply down his back. The sudden, extreme angle of the weight on his horns wrenched the sim-Chadrian’s head back at a bad angle, snapping his neck instantly.

The warrior shattered into light, and then reformed immediately into three Humans in flowing robes. The blue glow made them look more like the purple-red of an old bruise than the crimson flood of new blood that they usually invoked, but Jyn knew Imperial Royal Guardsmen when she saw them. One pulled a blaster, but the other two had bladed staves. Jyn grimaced -  _seriously?_  - but there was no time to whine about it, because the blaster was already firing. Jyn charged the nearest staff-wielder, aware that the second was hard on her heels and the blaster-armed guardsman was moving sideways, surrounding her. For the next several long, breathless seconds, Jyn’s world narrowed to the sharp edge of two blades, the irregular firing patterns of a heavy blaster pistol (DT-57? Hard to tell), and the hard side of her truncheon. It became a dance, a rhythm, duck, slash, backstep, twist, and she gave no ground because there was no ground to give. Here was all she had, here was where she would stand, and all around her she could see only the flow of red cloth, the edges of blades, the flash of a red blaster bolt. Dodge, roll, block, lash out with truncheon and fists and feet and  _your body is a weapon_  Saw thundered in her head, distant as an oncoming storm but she remembered, she remembered,  _there is no part of you that cannot be turned to your advantage, for every part of you is yours to command_  and Jyn slipped up close to the blaster-wielding guard and pressed her back to his chest, her fingers around his, and fired and fired until the bladed staffs (and the bodies attached to them) exploded into stardust.

She felt the guardsman at her back drop the blaster, give it over to her, but nothing came for free in war so she knew it for the trap it was, felt the shift in his stance as he raised his newly freed hands over her head (blade, he had a blade in those flowing robes, she knew it, they always did and she would certainly have done the same) so Jyn spun on her heel and the deadly point of her own vibroblade slipped as easily into the sim-Guard’s glowing ribs as it would have cut through flesh.

The Guard froze, his blade a mere centimeter from Jyn’s right eye, and then exploded in a flash. Jyn spun, her truncheon up in a reflexive block and her blade ready to strike –

Nothing.

Nothing?

The crowd was shrieking and dancing, dozens of rebels crushed against each other along the chalk outline, some even standing on top of X Wings and whooping, and Jyn blinked because – oh.

Five minutes. It had felt…faster.

Someone shouted  _kill those Imperial fuckers, Sarge!_  over the approving roar of the crowd, and several people seemed to be exchanging credit chips and vouchers. At the console, Rasif the Twi’lek was chattering in cheerful rapidfire with some other techs, gesturing wildly at Jyn, but Ensign Misha was bent over the console with her hands flying furiously across the controls. At her touch, the lights of the console controls flickered, and then seemed to settle into a steady blue glow. The tech grinned in triumph and looked up at Jyn, giving her a massive thumbs up.

Jyn cleared her throat, tucked her truncheon and her knife away, and nodded shortly to the tech. She spun on her heel, intending to march through that crowd and perhaps go cool off in her quarters, and found herself face to face with Cassian Andor.

Jyn froze like a womp-rat in a searchlight.

Cassian’s arms were folded, his eyes dark. To everyone else, he looked calm, almost relaxed, but Jyn could see his fingertips were digging into his forearms a little too tight, the lines around his eyes just a little too tense. Behind him, Kay was standing in a very small but still distinct empty space in the crowd, none of the cheering rebels willing to push too close to the droid. His yellow optics glowed at her disapprovingly, and Jyn could practically see the lecture he was queuing up in his processor. If she was lucky, Cassian would let Kay harangue her for awhile and leave it at that.

She looked back at Cassian, and watched as his eyebrow slowly arched.  His eyes flicked down to her torso, clearly marking the two places she’d been hit, and then back to her face, tracing a quick path over her forehead. Jyn guessed that the sim-Chadrian might have left some bruises on her face after all, where his massive fingers had dug into her skull when he threw her. Cassian studied the marks with a detached air, and then met her eyes again, and no, no it did not look like he was willing to leave it to Kay, after all.

Well, Jyn thought with an internal sigh.

Shit.


	2. read between the lines

To his credit, Cassian didn’t even look angry as he walked with her through the narrow corridors of Home One. At least, not in any way that strangers could see; he was playing his ‘bored commuter’ role, shoulders relaxed, eyes slightly glassy, jaw a little slack, pace just on the faster side of a stroll. His whole demeanor broadcasted to anyone looking that he was just another nobody coming off his work shift, headed to his quarters. Only Jyn knew that this was actually a sign that he was anything _but_ relaxed, that he was working hard to keep his appearance boring because if anyone looked too close, he might lash out. When Cassian was _actually_ calm, he tended to power walk through the cruiser like a man heading out on a mission vital to the survival of the rebellion and the known galaxy, too. People shuffled out of his way, subconsciously clearing a path for someone doing something so important. It matched her own typical brisk pace perfectly, and walking beside him when they were actually going somewhere important together felt a little like charging into battle, riding some invisible but distinct wave of inevitability. Somehow his longer stride never outpaced her, somehow she never shoved him to the sidelines.

Jyn may, admittedly, have spent a little too much time studying the way Cassian moved.

Which explained, at least, why she was getting progressively more irritable as they neared Cassian’s quarters. It was the forced casual saunter, the neutral mask, but worst of all was the sudden distance that he enforced between them. It took nearly ten minutes to walk the length of the cruiser from the hangar where she had beat the simulator to Intel’s berthing, and not once did he glance at her or brush against her arm even when other soldiers passed them and he had to step to the side to make room. He didn’t walk at arm’s length or anything, that would be ridiculous in these narrow corridors, but never in her life had Jyn been so aware of five centimeters’ worth of empty space.

By the time his door came in view and Cassian stepped forward to key in his code, Jyn’s patience was stretched thin. It didn’t help that her side throbbed where the sim-Chadrian had slammed into her, and she could feel the muscles in her shoulders at the base of her neck tightening like screws. The fake enemy had wrenched her neck slightly when it threw her around by her head. If she didn’t get some serious stretching in before bed, she’d be stiff as all hells tomorrow. The combination of pain and nerves had her heart pumping almost as fast as it had been in the simulator, so when Cassian’s door swished open, she didn’t wait for him to invite her in. She stomped into the dark, narrow room and turned sharply on her heel in the center of it.

Cassian followed her in quietly, closing the door and flipping the overhead light on. The small confines of the quarters forced them to stand within two paces of one another, although from the way his expression was still set in some stranger’s bland disapproval, he might as well have been on the other end of the cruiser. The harsh white lights highlighted the sharp edges of his cheekbones and jaw; they emphasized the dark circles under his eyes. A part of her ached at the sight, because last night had clearly been another bad night for him, and now here she was, making his day that much worse.

On the other hand, she hadn’t done anything wrong. Not really. The simulator had safeties, and she could always have rolled out of the chalk line if it got out of hand and reset the whole damn thing. What right did he have to be angry with her for helping out a little bit? For having a little fun? Maybe sparking a small disturbance in the hangar, alright, but only for a few minutes. It wasn’t like she’d been inciting riots. Jyn _had_ incited riots before, she knew the difference.

Bolstered by her righteousness, Jyn folded her arms and glared at him.

Cassian folded his own, and stared right back, silent.

The moment stretched, and Jyn ground her teeth together. Oh, that _bastard._ He was waiting her out, because they both knew he was better at waiting, and if he stood there long enough she would crack and start arguing, and he would listen quietly and wait for the right moment and then say something devastating that made her feel like a total arsehole. Or he would just wait until she talked herself into apologizing because, well, alright, maybe the simulator had been a little bit stupid. Basically, she recognized with a scowl, he was going to stand there and wait for her to hand him a victory, and if she played by his rules there was a damn good chance that she _would._

There was only one thing to do – cheat.

She dropped her arms and forced the scowl to slide off her face. It took her a moment, because she couldn’t switch masks as easily and smoothly as he could. But Jyn Erso had spent the last six years of her life prior to the Alliance scamming her way across the universe, so a few breaths later, she was leaning casually back on one leg, her hands resting on her belt, her shoulders down and back, and a small, challenging smirk on her face. Cassian’s eyebrow lifted fractionally at the shift, but otherwise he didn’t flinch.

“So,” Jyn drawled, and watched him through half-closed eyes, “Win any credits?”

She tried not to hold her breath as his gaze sharpened, some of the bored distance burning away. “What?”

“Did you bet on me?” She asked a touch impatiently, shrugging like this was too simple to be explained. “To beat the sim?”

His mouth thinned. “Should I have?”

She straightened, her smirk slipping a little because that was just _insulting_. “Obviously.” She stalked forward and pointed at him, still just out of arm’s reach. “What, did you bet _against_ me?”

“I was distracted,” he replied, an edge forming in his otherwise mild tone, “watching you get flung through the air.”

Jyn wrinkled her nose. “ _Once,_ ” she muttered sullenly, then shook herself, remembering to relax her body language and smooth her face back into the smirk. Cassian tilted his head slightly in response, like he was in the audience of a vaguely interesting show, inviting her to entertain him. It would have been infuriating, except he did that thing with his mouth, that amused little press of his lips that meant he was hiding his real expression. “I was just helping out,” Jyn said slowly, distracted by the motion but determined not to let him know. If Cassian had any idea how he could derail her thoughts with such a small gesture, she would be in a world of trouble. “A tactical training simulator will improve our soldiers’ odds in the field by twenty-five percent,” she said tartly to cover her momentary stumble, mimicking K2SO to the best of her ability.

Cassian’s eyebrow climbed another centimeter. “You made that number up.”

Jyn shrugged. “Prove it.”

“They would have managed, eventually,” he said after a beat, and the smirk slipped entirely off her face now because he no longer looked bored at all. He kept his head tilted down, which cast shadows in his eyes and made them darker than usual, and now that he wasn’t hiding it, his jawline was too tense. He kept his arms crossed, a barrier between them. “You didn’t need to get involved. Especially,” he added, the edge sharpening in his tone. “So publicly.”

“Is that it?” Jyn stared at him incredulously. “Because people _watched?_ ”

“We are spies, Jyn,” his voice was low now, urgent. He bent his head to look her straight in the eye (with a jolt, she realized that she had drifted closer and now had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze), “We’re meant to be forgettable.” She was a second from snapping out _I didn’t do it for the attention_ but he cut her off, his eyes dropping to look at the floor, “You could lead.”

She blinked, thrown by the sudden curveball. “What?”

Cassian closed his eyes, seemed to square his shoulders, then looked back at her. “You are…magnetic,” he said slowly. “You draw people in. If you decided you wanted to leave – Intel,” he jerked his chin slightly, as if he had bitten off some other word, “and command your own field unit, they would give it to you in a heartbeat. And half the Alliance would volunteer.”

How, she wondered, in the many hells was she supposed to process that?

“But if not,” he went on, either oblivious to or ignoring her startled silence, “then it’s…safer, to avoid the crowds.”

 _Command your own field unit_ – there was a certain appeal in that. The last time she’d commanded her own unit had been with the Partisans, and yes, she had enjoyed it. Yes, she’d been kriffing good at it. But that was when she was a teenager, and living up to her reputation as Saw’s best lieutenant had been her whole world. It had somewhat less appeal these days, though for a moment she did consider the possibility. An official combat unit was assigned weapons, armor, resources; a combat unit wasn’t expected to just make do out in the field with whatever they could steal or barter or rig up with their own hands. There were no solo missions or long-term undercovers in a combat unit.

Cassian was watching her, she could feel the weight of his gaze on her face, and when she snapped back to the present and looked up at him, she saw something like pain flit through his eyes and then vanish in an instant as he watched her consider a future without him. Because it would be without him, wouldn’t it? Cassian would never shift from Intelligence. They would never let him, he was far too valuable, too good at what he did, too embedded in too many different worlds under too many important aliases. So Jyn let the brief, idle fantasy of a more straightforward war fade and vanish from her imagination, and didn’t much miss it.

“So is that why you’re pissed off?” She asked again. “Because people saw me?”

His answer came a touch too quick to be natural. “Who said I’m pissed off?”

In answer, Jyn reached out and flicked her knuckle against one of his hands, still clenched tight around his bicep. He instantly relaxed his grip, but it was too late, and they both knew it. Jyn lifted her hand and traced her fingertip softly against the stress lines next to his right eye, and this time the smirk came easily, without having to force it. “That so?”

“I’m not,” he started, and then to her surprise, he closed his eyes again and leaned in to her. She had moved closer again; they were only five centimeters apart. “That thing sent seven Pathfinders to the medward, Jyn.”

Jyn snorted. “Yeah. But, you know Pathfinders,” she lifted her other hand, a little impressed at her own daring, and ran her fingertips down the line of his jaw on both sides, feeling it flex under her touch. “Bunch of babies. _I’m_ fine.”

Cassian’s eyes narrowed. Without a word, he reached over and flicked his knuckle against her sore ribs. Jyn barely caught her flinch, but before she could recover entirely, he raised his hand and traced his fingertips softly against her hairline.

“’s nothing,” she mumbled. “Bruises.”

“You should go to medical.”

Jyn rolled her eyes, but most of her attention was caught on the whisper of his shirt sleeves as he unfolded his arms at last. He set one hand on her shoulder, and the other continued a careful path along her forehead, brushing back her hair so he could glare at the marks there. “See any blood?”

“No,” Cassian frowned at her. “But that’s not - ”

“I’m fine.”

His jaw flexed again, and Jyn’s heart flipped in her chest as the movement drew her attention to his throat and she noticed suddenly that his pulse seemed to be beating much, much too fast for how detached he sounded.

It occurred to her, perhaps several minutes later than it really should have, that it was not always _anger_ that drove Cassian to wall himself off behind fake boredom. There had been a few times during their ops out in the field, moments when she had tangled with ‘troopers or pirates or wanna-be muggers and turned, flushed and panting, to see Cassian watching her with an intensity that almost always immediately flattened into his neutral mask. Most of the time, they had to move on to stay alive, and she let herself forget.

But there was nothing chasing them now, nowhere to go, and Cassian’s fingers were so sweet against her skin. So Jyn licked her lips, and took a risk.

“You have to admit,” she murmured thoughtfully, angling her head so that her breath hit him right at the base of his throat as she spoke. “I put in a good showing.”

Cassian’s hand stilled for only a moment. And then he nodded solemnly. “Not bad.”

Jyn jerked her head back to glare up at him. “Not _bad?_ ” She jammed her fist against the center of his chest, shoving him lightly. To her delight, he rocked back but didn’t step away, merely raising that same eyebrow at her once more. “For reference, Captain,” she told him pointedly, “I was a fucking marvel.”

“Yes,” he breathed, and something coiled and shivered in Jyn’s belly because _that_ did not sound like worry about her health or concern about her anonymity. It sounded like…

“You should still go to medical,” he cut into her chaotic thoughts, his mouth doing that _thing_ again, damn him, and his hand dropping from her forehead to trace almost idly around her ear, tucking back a slightly tangled lock of hair. He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded rough as he squeezed her shoulder with his other hand. “Get checked out.”

She really couldn’t ask for a better opening, so Jyn summoned her courage and lifted her head. “If you’re so worried,” she said, looking him dead in the eye, “ _You_ do it.”

Cassian’s eyes widened, and he froze, even his chest stilling for a moment. Jyn’s stomach dropped, her balance staggered – she’d pushed too far, tried to climb a staircase with one less step than she expected, run an obstacle course and tripped over the last wire. She swallowed and stepped back, feeling Cassian’s fingers slide from her skin and leaving his hand grasping at the empty air. A dozen different dismissive comments flashed through her head, brush it off, make some joke, anything, but in the end her throat was too tight and nothing would form coherently in her mind. Better to just leave. Jyn turned toward the door; maybe she should go to medical, she’d clearly addled her brain and thought that –

Cassian was in front of her again, between her and the door, his hands on her waist, and now it was Jyn who froze because Cassian was tugging lightly on the hem of her shirt, Cassian was standing so close that her nose was almost brushing his, Cassian was brushing his fingertips so lightly against her sides underneath her shirt that she almost thought she was imagining it. “Then I will,” he said, and it took her an embarrassingly long moment to register what he meant.

His fingertips were so warm against her sides.

Jyn nodded. Cassian waited a beat longer, as if he thought she might change her mind, and then he pulled her shirttail entirely free from her trousers and shoved it up to reveal her midriff. Her light jacket hung awkwardly in the way, so Jyn shrugged it off and then, deliberately, let it fall to the ground in a heap. Cassian stilled again at the sudden removal of one of her layers, and he straightened to check her expression.

When the first simulated stormtrooper had pointed a blaster at her face, Jyn had felt all her nerves ignite, a rush of energy made of equal parts fear and familiarity, the world narrowed down and filtered out until that remained was the fight in front of her. In her head, in that moment, something had known that this was right, this was where she _lived_. When Cassian lifted his head and looked at her, his fingers still brushing her half-bared skin, it was like living that moment all over again, but the fear had no teeth and the familiarity was skewed. He wasn’t going to hurt her. He wasn’t going to leave her behind.

Cassian looked at Jyn with his hands half-tangled in her shirt, and something inside her knew that this was right, this was where she could _live_. 

So Jyn lifted her chin and met all the heat in his gaze with her own. “Well?” she asked softly, and suddenly Cassian’s hands had left her ribs and were instead on either side of her face, pulling her up to his own, and Jyn stumbled a little at the sudden shift in balance but this time when her stomach swooped inside her, it was with satisfaction – a perfectly timed maneuver managed, a tricky obstacle navigated.

Even in this, though, he was so careful, his grip light, his mouth only just skimming against hers, and Jyn’s skin burned everywhere he touched but he did not move further. “Is this what you want?” he whispered, and then he waited, patient, so fucking patient, so willing to wait for her to get her shit together. So willing to let her walk her own path, even if that path took her away from him. It had been a long time since anyone had given her a choice, longer still since anyone had cared about her enough to wait. It burned across her skin, burrowed into her heart, fear and familiarity alike, and Jyn took a long, shaky breath to steady herself.

“Jyn,” Cassian said against her lips, and Jyn’s patience snapped (damn it, he _always_ won when it came to patience). She looped her arms around his neck and pushed up on her toes, her kiss hard and a little wild but Cassian caught her against him, caught her and carried her back. Dimly she was aware of the wall behind him now, aware that he was bracing his shoulders against it while he bent his head, aware that he was half-supporting her weight as she stretched her body against his. She could feel her ribs protesting, feel the twinges in her neck and the throb of her headache in faint echoes – all from a great distance away, none as important as the sensation of Cassian’s hand cradling the back of her head, his other wrapped underneath the curve of her ass as he pulled her in tight. None of it mattered more than his mouth hard and hot and wet against hers, his heartbeat hammering against her chest, his breath catching when she caught his lower lip gently between her teeth. Nothing in the galaxy could be more important in this moment than the sweet thrill in her blood when he hooked his hand behind her thigh and pulled her leg up around his waist.

“You are a marvel,” he said suddenly against her mouth, her throat, her ear. His voice was rough again, it caressed and caught at her skin just like his calloused fingers, and she’d been right before, _this_ was definitely where she could live. “You are beautiful, Jyn. I could barely breathe, watching you.”

She wanted to reply with something pithy, something clever or funny, but all that she could think was _Cassian, Cassian, Cassian,_ so instead she simply pulled back long enough to grin at him, long enough to delight in the flush spreading up his neck and ears, at the way his hair was now a wreck from her questing hands. He blinked at her, looking vaguely stunned, and then offered a half-smile back.  

“I still need,” he paused and coughed slightly, “I need to check your ribs, Jyn.”

Her grin widened, because even with her mind still hazy with desire and her body singing beneath his touch, that opening was just too easy. Jyn leaned back in his arms just enough to grab the hem of her shirt and yank it roughly over her head. The material fell to the floor somewhere near her jacket, and when Jyn looked back up at Cassian’s face, she saw that even with the harsh white light and the shadows under his eyes, he looked somehow younger, warmer, his skin flushed and his lips a little swollen from her kiss. He glanced from her face to her chest and back again, and then he smiled again, a full smile that brought out the dimple on his cheek and the warmth of his eyes. Jyn slid her hands on his shoulders and told herself to remember this, remember, take a mental holo of Cassian smiling in her arms and stow it somewhere secret in her soul, somewhere she could take it out and look at it when things got bad.

Then she wound her fingers into the collar of his shirt and tugged him upright (and coincidentally, closer to the bed that was only a few steps behind her). She tilted her head down towards her bruised side without breaking eye contact and quirked an eyebrow, an invitation.

Cassian laughed, and took it.


End file.
